Carly Fiorina, the ousted chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, knows only too well the dangers of public infighting.

The woman who engineered the merger of Compaq and Hewlett-Packard has been no stranger to political knifings, secret plotting, damaging leaks to the media and smear campaigns. She was forced out by the Hewlett-Packard board two years ago after months of infighting that led to the worst period of the computer giant’s history.

As the head of the team organising John McCain’s presidential campaign finances, she is seeing the same tactics played out from a different perspective. She is quietly watching the Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama perpetrate very public, and increasingly nasty, attacks against each other.

In an exclusive interview with The Times, Ms Fiorina said: “As the Democratic contest goes on, Hillary and Obama are spending lots of energy trying to reveal negatives about each other.”

Happily for Ms Fiorina, the public spat between Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama may save the Republican campaign a lot of money. With the two Democratic candidate rivals exposing each other’s weaknesses so effectively, Mr McCain may worry less that he has less funds to deploy to undermine the Democrats.

Ms Fiorina explains: “What is important to John McCain is that people understand the differences [between the Democrats and the Republicans] on issues, the contrasts between us.”

While Mr McCain may be busy emphasising “the contrasts”, he will be even busier in the next few months raising new money for his presidential campaign. He is seeing at least two potential donors a day, at 30 events a month.

He is even travelling to London this month to try to raise funds. Three weeks ago, Mr McCain said that he saw the next few months as a crucial period to “get our own house in order”.

In February, flushed with success in the primaries and emerging as the clear candidate for the Republican Party, he managed to raise only $12 million (£5.9 million), compared with $90 million secured by Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama between them. As at January 31, Mr McCain boasted $55 million in his campaign coffers, compared with Mrs Clinton’s $138 million and Mr Obama’s $141 million.

Republicans will be particularly nervous of a repeat of last summer when Mr McCain’s campaign was threatened because he overspent and failed to raise enough new cash. This month, while campaigning in Florida, Mr McCain said: “You can see the great job that our opponents have done in fundraising. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

While the Vietnam war hero is known for his experience in foreign affairs, he has been perceived as the candidate most vulnerable to accusations that he does not understand business, the economy and Wall Street. That perception was not helped when he admitted in public that he was going to buy the recently published memoirs of Alan Green-span, the retired Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, to better understand the economy.

The appointments this month of Ms Fiorina and Lew Eisenberg, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, were certainly made to address that perception and to increase support from financial circles. Ms Fiorina will serve as the party’s victory fund chairwoman while Mr Eisenberg will be its victory fund finance chairman.

Ms Fiorina said: “I have known John McCain since 2000, and speaking as a businesswoman, I can tell you he doesn’t need any coaching on the economy. He understands the importance of innovation, the way to grow an economy, the way to put control in the hands of small businesses which are responsible for 77 per cent of the growth of this nation.”

She pointed out that “heavy-hitters” such as John Chambers, the chief executive of Cisco Systems, and John Thain, the new chief executive of Mer-rill Lynch, had recently “signed on” to support Mr McCain.

But Mr McCain is facing tough competition - while he has secured the support of other businessmen such as Steve Schwarzmann, head of Black-stone, the private equity giant, and of the Fedex chief executive Fred Smith, Mrs Clinton can boast the support of more than 150 executives behind brands such as Anheuser-Busch, Estée Lauder and Sun MicroSystems.

But this weekend, Mr McCain received a boost when it emerged that Meg Whitman, the outgoing chief executive of eBay, will co-chair his national presidential campaign.

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The contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton matches any fiction

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